INVESTIGATION OF RESIDUAL DATA ON SECOND HAND SMART PHONES
Keywords:
Data forensics, Data privacy, Data recovery, Remnant data, Residual data, Smart phonesAbstract
Due to rapid changes in technology, many new models of smart phones are introduced to the market every year. This has led to people changing their smart phones more frequently, which means more smart phones have become available in the second hand market for those who would like to own them at lower prices. The research was begun with a question of whether or not there would be any data belonging to the previous users remained on the phones, and if so, how much of it would still be accessible. In order to answer the questions, thirty second hand smart phones with different versions of both iOS and Android operating systems were bought from the second hand market in Thailand. The main aim of this research was to determine the types of data, if any, that still remained on the obtained second hand smart phones. The experiment showed that approximately 63 per cent of the second hand smart phones investigated in this research still contained data that were both confidential and recoverable. The awareness of this security issue is hoped to be raised as a result.
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